Darlington golf club's financial woes 'should have been flagged up sooner'

6:49pm Tuesday 12th March 2013 in News Photograph of the Author By Andy Walker, Chief Reporter (Darlington)

MONEY WOES: Stressholme Golf Course, in Darlington, which has been subsidised by the council in recent years MONEY WOES: Stressholme Golf Course, in Darlington, which has been subsidised by the council in recent years

FINANCIAL difficulties suffered by a golf course at the centre of a controversial takeover deal should have been highlighted “four or five years ago”, a senior councillor has claimed.

Stressholme Golf Course, in Darlington, is being sold off by Darlington Borough Council to the neighbouring, privately-run, Blackwell Grange Golf Club.

The land swap will see the council buy 24 acres of Blackwell land, which has been earmarked for a future executive housing development.

Questions have arisen in recent weeks, following the decision of the council’s cabinet to press ahead with the deal - including whether Stressholme's £1m price tag was best value for council tax-payers, given that it could potentially be worth more if sold for development.

A meeting of the council’s efficiency and resources scrutiny committee, today (Tuesday, March 12), was told that such an outcome for Stressholme is extremely unlikely, as it is not within Darlington’s agreed development area and other more suitable development sites have already been identified.

Committee chairman Ian Haszeldine backed the original cabinet decision and said he could see just two potential uses for the land occupied by Stressholme: golf or agriculture.

Stressholme has received council subsidies worth hundreds of thousands of poundsin recent years.

The issue had been ‘called in’ for scrutiny by members of the council’s Conservative opposition and the deal now seems likely to proceed as planned.

Tory councillor Charles Johnson said: “It was known some time ago how difficult Stressholme had become.

“It should have been looked at four or five years ago, when it started going wrong, and decisions taken then.”

Coun Haszeldine said Stressholme’s finances had previously been scrutinised, but added that it had not been in great detail as other issues had taken precedence in the past.

Paul Wildsmith, the council’s director of resources, told the meeting he would still have recommended the authority press ahead with the project, even if loss-making Stressholme had performed better financially.

Labour councillor Bob Carson, a member of the scrutiny committee, said the meeting had been an example of how the council engages with the public.

Hinting at the millions of pounds worth of spending cuts the council has to make, he warned: “Stressholme is not going to be a one-off, there will be lots of decisions people are uncomfortable and unhappy with.” 

Comments(15)

Spy Boy says...
7:08pm Tue 12 Mar 13

There's just so much wrong with this whole project. The first thing is the tiny purchase price. A second is that there are very few details. So much for transparency. What is this offset deal that allows the council to build on green belt land ? I'm betting that they won't post the answer here. If we must sell off our assets, we nust get the best price for them, not some little deal done by the council with a single possible buyer. It should go under offer to any company or buyer that would be interested. Why do the council keep selling our assets to their pals at knocked down prices ?

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oliviaden6 says...
7:32pm Tue 12 Mar 13

They sell it of in this manner as it is easy way to do no work for the people who we pay to look after our interests. This council should be sacked for gross negligence. As far as green belt land goes should the application be passed to the relevant secretary of State to clarify the sale or nonsale.
It is about time this smug self centered council let by Labour be brought to task and held responsible for its actions

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golf4all says...
7:44pm Tue 12 Mar 13

It's probably not relevant but it is a matter of public record(if you know where to look) that the two main proponents of the takeover on the DBC side, Bill Dixon Leader of the Council and Paul Wildsmith Director of Resources are both listed as being members of Blackwell Grange Golf Club

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stevegg says...
8:00pm Tue 12 Mar 13

Another example of a publicaly owned assett which will be sold off way under value only to be resold on for 3 or 4 times the original cost. I smell a back hand deal going on here for a cheap deal as with other public owned sell offs!! Its probably a done deal anyway as most council schemes are well before the public consultation starts.

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loan_star says...
10:02pm Tue 12 Mar 13

oliviaden6 wrote:
They sell it of in this manner as it is easy way to do no work for the people who we pay to look after our interests. This council should be sacked for gross negligence. As far as green belt land goes should the application be passed to the relevant secretary of State to clarify the sale or nonsale.
It is about time this smug self centered council let by Labour be brought to task and held responsible for its actions
Unfortunately the people of Darlington rarely vote anything other than a labour council back in.

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Darloresident says...
10:30pm Tue 12 Mar 13

As a matter of interest - why was Stressholme not put up for sale?? Another sports body may have been interested.
A done deal to a neigbouring golf course at a knock down price smells fishy..

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Oh Happy Days says...
8:27am Wed 13 Mar 13

loan_star wrote:
oliviaden6 wrote: They sell it of in this manner as it is easy way to do no work for the people who we pay to look after our interests. This council should be sacked for gross negligence. As far as green belt land goes should the application be passed to the relevant secretary of State to clarify the sale or nonsale. It is about time this smug self centered council let by Labour be brought to task and held responsible for its actions
Unfortunately the people of Darlington rarely vote anything other than a labour council back in.
So true

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oliviaden6 says...
9:59am Wed 13 Mar 13

Oh Happy Days wrote:
loan_star wrote:
oliviaden6 wrote: They sell it of in this manner as it is easy way to do no work for the people who we pay to look after our interests. This council should be sacked for gross negligence. As far as green belt land goes should the application be passed to the relevant secretary of State to clarify the sale or nonsale. It is about time this smug self centered council let by Labour be brought to task and held responsible for its actions
Unfortunately the people of Darlington rarely vote anything other than a labour council back in.
So true
Is all i can say is that Labour are buying votes(alledgely) the people of Darlington deserve better than the numpties that are running it at the moment, where i used to live Labour were in power for years and the borough was in dire straits, Conservative won a local election and turned the borough around for the good of all, they then duely lsot the next election and now that borough is being run again by LAbour and the borough is and has gone from good to bad in a very short space of time. Councillors need to be minded it is the PUBLIC MONEY they are dealing with and wasting not their own private slush fund?

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Homshaw1 says...
12:41pm Wed 13 Mar 13

I can not understand how a golf course owned by the people of Darlington and popular with the public can not pay for itself.

**** Up and Brewery spring to mind

Again the public lose a great facility

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golf4all says...
5:28pm Wed 13 Mar 13

Come off it Homshaw1, you sound like a Labour Councillor in a Labour dominated Council! Any business, even one "owned by the people of Darlington" has to charge it's customers enough to pay it's overheads or it very quickly goes out of business. The rates charged to be a member at Stressholme meant that they needed to have over 1200 members so that they could pay the greenkeepers, the bar staff and the kitchen staff etc., etc. Very few golf clubs have half that number of members nowadays and Stressholme is no exception.Unfortunat
ely no one at the council could do the maths so 95% of the people of Darlington paid an average of 175,000 pounds a year for the past 5 years out of their rates so that the other 5% could play cheap golf. Nice work if you can get it.Dozens of municipal golf courses all over the country are closing for the same reason.Darlington is lucky that the Blackwell members are prepared to try to make a go of Stressholme so the millions of pounds spent by the Ratepayers setting up and subsidising the course will not have been entirely wasted.

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Apocalypse Later says...
5:48pm Wed 13 Mar 13

Hold on a minute golf4all.
It was only last year that it was reported that Stressholme was losing £89000 a year - since then there have been redundancies so that figure must of been reduced.
Then, this year it was reported that Stressholme was losing £175000 a year - how did the previous figure become so inflated?
The Dolphin centre is costing the taxpaqyer £1000000 a year - will this be closed down? - I don't think so.
As for the Blackwell members "giving Stressholme a go" - they have no choice!
Due to Blackwells "commitee" making such bad decisions and driving members away they are effectively bankrupt (not to mention "the court case")
With this deal they are getting a golf course which doesn't become waterlogged everytime it rains - and £250000 in the bank!
I am sure Bill Dixon and Paul Wildsmith will enjoy playing there very much.

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golf4all says...
4:51pm Thu 14 Mar 13

The current proposal, already approved by Cabinet, is that Blackwell Grange will get a million pounds up front for the land it owns. DBC will then apply for planning permission on the land. The new club will only pay for Stressholme when said planning permission is obtained and the land sold. DBC will also get the million pounds back at that stage.If planning permission is not obtained DBC will not get paid for Stressholme and will not get it's money back. All this information and much more is available on DBC's excellent website for anyone to see.

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Jonn says...
10:07pm Fri 15 Mar 13

1 million! Is that all it was sold for? Someones going to be making a tidy profit. Scandalous.

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golf4all says...
11:14am Sat 16 Mar 13

All the factors involved in the complex and protracted negotiations related to this matter are available to anyone on the DBC website.
It is good that there are people who take sufficient interest to comment but would be better if the comments were not so ill-informed and prejudiced

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The Grim Reeper says...
2:36pm Wed 20 Mar 13

It would seem that it is alright for those at DBC to make mistakes over the sale and proposal of sale/ takeover of Stressholme, concerning what they have done in terms of actually ploughing through all the possible alternatives open to them at the present day? thats apart from the changes in Profit & Loss, well according to them there was no Profit ? They do not deserve to run form of business let alone a Council as there have been question marks all through there dealings over this takeover by Blackwell GC who themselves have a ? hanging over them in the way in which they have ran their GC.

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